Tinsagu nu Hana

The title of the song can be translated as "The Balsam Flowers".^[3] The song is an Okinawan children's song; Okinawan children would squeeze the sap from balsam flowers to stain their fingernails as a way to ward off evil.^[4][5][6] The lyrics of the song are Confucian teachings. Of the first six verses, the first three relate to filial piety, while the latter three refer to respecting one's body and one's goals. Each verse has exactly the same number of notes using language and meter devices that are uniquely Okinawan, called Ryūka.^[7]

The Okinawa Prefectural government designated "Tinsagu nu Hana" as "Okinawa Prefecture's favorite song" on March 18, 2012, following a public survey.^[8] It was subsequently made an official symbol of Okinawa Prefecture, making it the prefecture's second musical symbol alongside the "Song of Okinawa Prefecture".^[9]

The last four of the ten verses are missing.

Ryuichi Sakamoto used the song in the album Beauty. According to Felicity Collins of La Trobe University, this was the initial time that the song was "appropriated for a ‘world music’ audience".^[10]

It is a song used in the soundtrack of the 2003 Australian film Japanese Story.^[11] Shelley Scown was the vocalist, while Elizabeth Drake did the orchestral work. The song is used in the film's ending, where the protagonist, Sandy, watches an aircraft, which is carrying the body of a Japanese man, Hiromitsu, whom she grows to know throughout the film, taxiing and preparing to take off. Collins wrote that some movie critics from Japan perceived the usage of the song as "a contentious issue" because the song specifically has an Okinawan character and yet is not something generally related to Japan, and "secondly because the fragility and beauty of this song, about upholding Okinawan identity, seems incongruous in an Australian film".^[10]